Despite the rallies and Channel 7’s broadcast of an “in-depth” interview with the founders of Reclaim Australia, the disintegration of the far-right populist movement appears imminent. Unlike their American cousins, The Tea Party, they do not have significant financial backing and the poor showing of “patriots” at the Parramatta rally last month suggests that this grass-roots movement lacks organisation and/or a critical mass of people willing to get out on the streets to call for “non-patriots” to get out of the country. However, the devolution of this movement is not a victory of Australian multi-culturalism or common-sense.

Reclaim Australia gets small numbers to their rallies because they are unnecessary. Why spend a Sunday afternoon shouting in the streets when the political and economic system is silently re-asserting the normal order of things?

The normal order of things is maintained through symbolic and systemic modes of violence. Unlike physical violence directed at specific subjects, the symbolic and systemic violence operates in the background. For example, the violence inherent in the production cheap consumer goods that benefit the lives of some while exposing factory workers to physical harm when making our flat-screen TVs in Mexcio or iPhone’s in China.

Most of us do not see this violence because it isn’t directed at us. We only see the subjective violence of shootings or physical aggression. The subjective form of violence overshadows the systemic and symbolic forms of violence that allow the normal order of things to continue smoothly (for some). This is the violence inherent in fierce border protection policies or laws that target racial and religious minorities. It is the violence embodied in language that strips subjects of their humanness (e.g. illegal maritime arrivals) and makes the violence that they suffer either excusable or somehow deserving.

Systemic and symbolic violence tends to be invisible to those who benefit from the normal order of things that those modes of violence sustain. It is like a trompe l’oeil or the duck-rabbit illusion. For those who benefit these policies and arrangements look like caring necessity – “we need to protect ourselves” or “It is prudent to monitor Muslim boys because they are prone to radicalization”. However, to those on the other side, these policies and arrangements are experienced as exclusion and brutality.

In this context, Reclaim Australia will wither away, not because there is insufficient support for their message, but because Australia is already well and truly claimed. This claim is sustained by the long history of violent colonisation and occupation, the effects of which persist today. However, it is a claim that needs to be continually reasserted on the bodies and lives of non-white migrants.

In her recent book The White Possessive, Aileen Moreton-Robinson describes this “claim” as a white possession. White Australia’s existence as sovereign possessor is derived from the dispossession of Indigenous lands. As Moreton-Robinson notes, there is a deep anxiety that ‘racial others’ will in turn dispossess white Australia. The main utility of Reclaim Australia is as a warning that the normal order of things is being challenged. It is like a “flare-up” of the appendix in the body of white Australia, or to use another metaphor, a canary in a mine. Reclaim Australia is an expression of the anxiety that white Australia’s sovereignty is challenged.

The fear associated with a challenge to white sovereignty is seen in Native Title disputes. There is a deep fear that Indigenous claims will dispossess white Australian sovereignty over cities, suburbs, parks, beaches, arable lands, and natural resources (see Kerr and Cox’s ‘Setting Up the Nyoongar Tent Embassy‘). Yet, the reality does not lend credence to the anxieties and fears of white Australia – ‘the majority of Indigenous people in Australia do not have land rights, nor do they have legal ownership of their sacred sites.’

In the case of Islam, the fear of dispossession is also unfounded. According to the 2011 census, 2.2 % of the Australian population indicated they were affiliated with Islam. Of course the debates over Australia, radicalization, extremism, Islam, citizenship, borders and all the other nodes connected to this assemblage are not about evidence or facts. But control over who is admitted into white Australia, and the form that admittance takes. Some are wholly absorbed, while others remain in permanent parenthesis (asylum seekers).

While those attending Reclaim Australia rallies (and those sympathetic to their narrative) may feel that Islam is an existential threat to the white claim to Australia, the terms and conditions of political and social reality are established by and for a white Australia. The challenge is not to reclaim Australia, but to place the current claim in the context of historical and contemporary forms of violence that privilege those who possess whiteness and its associated symbols and markers.

In the words of Stan Grant, we need to challenge that violence and our own attachment and benefit from it.

Australians who so laudably challenge the bigots among them need also challenge themselves. What are they prepared to give up? Land, history, flag, anthem, myth or identity – all of it is on the table if we are truly serious. Other countries fight wars over these things: we can do it in peace.

Stage One: Be Generous & Wear Other People’s Shoes

So, the truth is, we don’t really deserve our good fortune. And that’s why, if you are – if you do well, you’ve got to give something back. That’s why I encourage people to be generous…

The important thing is to have the emotional – emotional intelligence and the empathy and the imagination that enables you to walk in somebody else’s shoes, to be able to sit down with them on a train or on a – in the street, hear their story and have the imagination to understand how they feel. Emotional intelligence is probably the most important asset for – certainly for anyone in my line of work.

Stage Two: You, Me, & Maybe Them Get “It” – But Gee Things are Tough

I understand the issue. I have same concerns about it, about the situation of people on Manus and Nauru as you do, and as I would think almost all Australians – all Australians do. As the Minister Mr Dutton does. But what I’m not going to do is make changes to our border protection policy sitting here with you. Our policies will change, all policies change, but when we do make changes we will do so in a considered way.

Stage Three: Real Politik with a Merchant Banker’s Face

Patricia Karvelas: First, on border protection, you told Sky News earlier today you were concerned about the plight of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru. What does that concern mean for what happens to the policy? Will we re-settle these people in Australia?

Malcolm Turnbull: No. That is absolutely clear that there will be no resettlement of the people in Manus and Nauru in Australia. They will never come to Australia. Now, I know that’s tough. We do have a tough border protection policy. You could say it is a harsh policy. But it has worked.

In 2003 the US was attempting to gain an international consensus in support of their planned invasion of Iraq. The French government were not so keen and refused to join the “coalition of the willing”. In a mature act of protest, certain American politicians and media personalities called for a boycott of all things French.

An immediate target was the delicious French Fry. Rather than boycotting the culinary delicacy that keeps America running – especially when the sugar hit of Dunkin’ Donuts wears off – some clever politicians proposed a re-branding. Robert Ney (R-Ohio) the chairman of the Committee on House Administration ordered that the three cafeterias in the House office buildings change their menus from listing french-fries and french-toast, to freedom-fries and freedom-toast. Representative democracy at its finest!

From the oddly hilarious blog “Swayze, Sinise, Selleck: Snacktime”

According to Ney this was ‘a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France’. A number of private restaurants followed suit and media personalities such as Bill O’Reilly encouraged consumers to boycott French products, particularly wine.

These figures suggest that ethnocentric consumers have the potential to significantly reduce sales – at least for a time. As shown through the work of Swaminathan et al. ‘[n]egative information or negative publicity surrounding a brand [or country] can threaten the stability of the consumer-brand relationship and has a higher salience and diagnostic value than positive information’.

The boycott of French products was different to earlier boycotts of Nestlé or Nike, where the boycott directly targets the perpetrator of the perceived wrong. The rejection of French wine served as a proxy for the French government. According to Chavis and Leslie, ‘[f]or consumers supporting the boycott of French wine, the hope was that somehow this may impact the behavior of the French government’.

As absurd as this scenario is it demonstrates the unpredictable political impact of country-of-origin labelling on consumer behavior. French wine and the idea of terroir is ordinarily seen as a mark of quality and something to be marketed, particularly in contrast to the increased interconnection between the food system and global capitalism enables the commercialised food product to be abstracted from the origin and conditions under which it was produced.

The global food systems results in anonymization of food product. The consumer at the point-of-purchase is ignorant of the conditions under which the food came to be in the supermarket. In this situation the consumer is vulnerable to manipulation by marketing and branding that seeks to represent what a consumer expects or imagines are the conditions under which food is produced.

A consumer may expect a food item, whether tinned tomatoes or cream-cheese, to be associated with pastoral scenes of red barns, wandering holstein’s, and perhaps a salt-of-the-earth type farmer leaning on a fence post. However, when the country-of-origin is known, and this knowledge coincides with a specific economic or political climate, this knowledge can have unpredictable effects on a brand, product or market.

Country-of-origin influences consumer purchasing decisions, but in unpredictable ways. Prior to 2003, a “product of France” label would indicate quality and tradition, characteristics beneficial for wine sales. However, for a period after 2003 it became a liability. While empirical research suggests that ‘consumers actually have only modest knowledge of the national origins of brands’, when labelling or political influence emphasise this information, the country-of-origin has the potential to transform a brand or product into a political act.

While a post-doc at Penn State (2011-13), renowned sociobiologist E.O. Wilson gave a lecture on eusociality – an understanding of the evolution of social cooperation and alturism among insects, such as ants, through: i) cooperative care of offspring; ii) overlapping generations within a colony of adults; and iii) a division of labour into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. Wilson extends these observations to human interactions and evolution.

Wilson asserts that religions do not have the necessary scientific understanding of the universe. And since the decline of logical positivism, philosophy has “scattered in a kind of intellectual diaspora and into those areas not yet colonized by science”. Not afraid of a non-sequitur, Wilson concludes – “by default therefore, the solution to the great riddle, if it has an answer, has been left to science”.

Wilson claims that eusociality and evolutionary biology provide the best answer to Gauguin’s questions. Rather than address the veracity and usefulness of Wilson’s eusociality, I want to focus on the type of answer that Wilson’s eusociality is and whether it address Gauguin’s questions.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s claim this week that people living in remote communities were making a “lifestyle choice” that taxpayers shouldn’t be obliged to fund was not just the result of an unguarded moment. Rather, the phrase reveals an underlying view that social circumstances are the responsibility of individuals, rather than societies.

Commentators as well as Abbott’s top advisers on Indigenous affairs were quick to criticise the characterisation. Others suggested it was just another prime ministerial gaffe that shouldn’t distract us from the real issues.

Abbott is infamous for his gaffes and “dad jokes”, but this was not one of those moments. A day after he made the remark, the prime minister defended his use of the phrase on the Alan Jones Show.

1) A knife. Stainless steel, but plastic will do in a pinch.
2) A flag. Black is scariest. Maybe that New Zealand one.
3) A camera phone. At least 6 pixel sensor resolution – grainy but not too grainy.
4) A victim. NB doesn’t have to be a human, could be something abstract, like freedom or Australian values e.g. mate-ship

Fat people should pay more to fly, because they weigh more and hence use more fuel.

Fat people can’t make good food choices so they should be coerced and stigmatized into making the right choice.

These and other spurious ideas are permitted to float around opinion pages of leading newspapers and journals because a) we think we have a fat people problem; b) shocking, blunt and simplistic solutions to complex problems are key ingredients to “click-bait”; and c) if we can reduce complex problems to economic calculations then we can pretend moralistic interventions into peoples lives are “neutral” because, hey it’s the raw numbers talking.

Anyway, in the below paper published this week I argue against Peter Singer and Dan Callahan’s attempts to justify direct interventions into the lives of fat people based on a simplistic use of the harm principle and a deep ignorance of empirical and public health research on obesity. Or as H.L. Mencken quipped, “For every human problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

Abstract

Debate concerning the social impact of obesity has been ongoing since at least the 1980s. Bioethicists, however, have been relatively silent. If obesity is addressed it tends to be in the context of resource allocation or clinical procedures such as bariatric surgery. However, prominent bioethicists Peter Singer and Dan Callahan have recently entered the obesity debate to argue that obesity is not simply a clinical or personal issue but an ethical issue with social and political consequences.

This article critically examines two problematic aspects of Singer and Callahan’s respective approaches. First, there is an uncritical assumption that individuals are autonomous agents responsible for health-related effects associated with food choices. In their view, individuals are obese because they choose certain foods or refrain from physical activity. However, this view alone does not justify intervention. Both Singer and Callahan recognize that individuals are free to make foolish choices so long as they do not harm others. It is at this point that the second problematic aspect arises. To interfere legitimately in the liberty of individuals, they invoke the harm principle. I contend, however, that in making this move both Singer and Callahan rely on superficial readings of public health research to amplify the harm caused by obese individuals and ignore pertinent epidemiological research on the social determinants of obesity. I argue that the mobilization of the harm principle and corresponding focus on individual behaviours without careful consideration of the empirical research is itself a form of harm that needs to be taken seriously.